A New Year

                                Oh January.  I love you. 

After a chaotically busy (but oh so fun) October, November and December… came JANUARY.  A month with nothing in it… just a plain old empty calendar.   How wonderful.    Don’t get me wrong, I love to be out there exploring, attending soccer games, having vacations, getting together with friends, and everything about Christmastime, but I also LOVE just being in my house with my family and nothing on the calendar.

I always enjoy using January to get organized again.  Christmas stuff away.  Storage room organized.  New toys away.  All toys reorganized.  Closets reorganized.  Clothes reorganized.   Pantry shelves downstairs reorganized.  Blog updated… etc.  But I mostly like getting my time organized again.  Setting up a new schedule…  Refocusing on Family goals...  Making new year’s resolutions...   (Boy do I love setting goals)… Getting the kids to bed earlier.  New incentive Programs for reading, practicing piano and German, making charts and re-creating a disciplined routine.  It’s what January is all about!!    

We’ve done really good sticking to our family goals.  One FHE late in January Chris planned a night to evaluate what individual and family goals we were doing well in and what we needed to work harder on.   We decided we needed an alarm so that we were able to get our morning Family prayer said before the kids ran off to the bus stop at 7:23.  Chris set up the Mac to go off at 7:00am and 7:00pm for Family Prayers.  It automatically plays “A Child’s Prayer” from the LDS Children’s songbook.  Now when it starts playing, we hear the kids say, “It’s time for Family Prayer!” and we all race downstairs to the family room to be kneeling and ready before the song ends.  It is working amazingly.  We love it.

And boy do I love an empty flexible schedule.  The boys and I made it to Music Makers every week.  We had family movie nights.  We completed homework and projects.   I updated my blog.  We had great family home evenings.  Chris and I have been exercising together regularly.  I am reading at night and love it.  It’s a great way to start off the year.

Last January I heard from someone who was choosing a word of the year.  A word to help inspire them.  I jumped on board.  A year ago I was almost finished nursing my last baby and therefore looked forward to a year with more ENERGY.  I was excited to really feel like myself for longer than six months.  I decided that STRONG would be my ‘word of the year’ for 2010.  I wanted my body to feel STRONG through exercise, but it also represented my goal for a STRONG marriage, a STRONG family and a STRONG testimony.   When I chose the word and made my goals for the new year we had no idea of our sudden plans for a move to Germany which developed just weeks later.    As I look back on last year I am amazed at the ways I have become STRONGER.  Adjusting to life and DRIVING in a foreign country?  Relying on each other and Heavenly Father? …  yes, much STRONGER. 

This year my word of the year is

I’m actually stealing this word from one of my friends… but it’s a good one.  Synonyms: order, control, restraint, obedience.  Antonym: chaos.   I like the definition as:  ‘order needed for instruction.’  Plus I just love how the word Disciple is kind of stuck in there too.    So anyway, here’s to being disciplined this year. 

On top of choosing my new word for the year I’ve decided to continue on with my daily new year’s resolutions checklist and journal.  Each night as I get into bed I sit down to write a few notes of the day and analyze how I’ve done.  My schedule, funny things that have happened throughout the day and my feelings.  I did it faithfully for the first four months of last year and I loved it.  {Not to mention that I’ve really enjoyed having a record of the day by day thoughts of our decision to move to Germany}  I wish that I would have continued with it but I’m going to try again with a little more discipline.    I hope.

 

{This is last January’s pad… the goals changed monthly based on what I wanted to accomplish.  Bed by 10:30… ya, that never happened.}

Garmisch, Germany

 

Chris’ parents stayed into January a bit and we kept the kids out of school to take a trip to Garmisch, Germany.   And guess what we  found… blue skies!  It was wonderful.  Heidelberg had been under foggy white skies for the last couple weeks of December and it was so nice to see blue skies again.  We stopped at the town just below the  Neuschwanstein Castle for a picture and a bathroom break (70 euro cents each) and then hopped back in the cars.  We made great time getting to Garmisch.  It’s a beautiful drive through the German and Austrian alps.

 

The kids were so excited to get to the Edelweiss Lodge again.   It was fun to see all of the Christmas decorations… Not many places can pull off a life-sized sleigh as a fireplace decoration.

  The kids could hardly wait to get to the hotel buffet restaurant…   They LOVE it!

 

We spent a lot of time in the lodge relaxing, watching movies, playing games in the ‘secret loft’ (which is what we called it even though it is not really secret at all), running between our room and Grandma and Grandpa’s room, swimming in the indoor pool, sitting in the big outside hot tub, sitting in the rocking chairs by the nice hot fire, riding the teeny tiny merry go round with the little boys, and eating, eating, eating at the buffet!  What a fun place!

Luke thought for sure he was sitting by Santa Claus himself and kept saying, “Mom, it’s Santa.  Right there!”  to which I kept saying, “Luke, shhhh!”  But now that I think about it, if Santa were to come on a relaxing vacation after all of his Christmas work was through, I’m positive it would be here!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One day Chris and his parents took a daytrip to the Dachau Concentration Camp just outside of Munich.  (Kids 12 and under were not allowed so I stayed at the lodge with the kiddos.)  Chris, Del and Shelley said it was interesting and very sobering.

 

The next day we decided to do the Zugspitze… the highest peak in all of Germany.   We drove about ten minutes to the base of the Zugspitze and finished putting all of our fifty layers on.  The temperature just waiting here for the train was about 12 degrees Fahrenheit.  We were cold and we hadn’t even started yet.  Jokingly I said to Chris, “This is going to be a once in a lifetime experience because I am NOT doing this again.”

 

 

 

 

We took the Zugspitzbahn (the train) about two thirds up the mountain and then took a cable car up the remaining third.  Already I had changed my mind… I would do this again in a heartbeat… it was breathtaking… 

 

 

Seriously. 

  

Right as we gathered to take a family picture the wind picked up and blew tiny pieces of ice in our faces.  Ouch!   We had to turn away and then try again in a different direction.

 

It was a mere –17 degrees Fahrenheit at the top so we could only stand to be outside for about four minutes before our face was red and sore and our teeth frozen (if we dared open our mouths).  The little boys, who throughout the day had an increasing temperature, couldn’t handle even that long.  Luckily the highest point in Germany is equipped with a big building with large observation rooms and a great German restaurant.  After checking out the views we brought everyone in, took half our layers off and headed for lunch. 

 

That picture of Emily shows that the restaurant was sitting on a cliff and had amazing views of the Alps.  Our food was really good too!

    

On the way down…

 

At the bottom after a great ride all the way down the mountain on the cable car.    

And then the next day… heading back to Heidelberg so Grandma and Grandpa could fly home.  Thanks for coming, Grandpa and Grandma!!! It was so fun!

Ludwigsburg Palace

On Dec 31st, Emily and Megan were the lucky ones to come along on our day’s adventures, while the other four stayed home.   We drove an hour away to Ludwigsburg to for the 12:30 English tour of the Ludwigsburg Palace. 

{Ludwigsburg Palace is one of Germany’s largest Baroque palaces and features an enormous baroque garden… (when it’s not covered in snow). The Palace was at times one of the most magnificent courts in Europe. The foundation stone was laid in 1704 under Duke Eberhard Ludwig of Württemberg (reigning monarch from 1693 to 1733). One year later, the site was named "Ludwigsburg" (in English: Ludwig's castle). Begun as a hunting lodge, the project became much more complex and gained momentum over the years.  In 1709, the duke established the city of Ludwigsburg directly next to his palace, copying the proximity of Versailles to Paris. The palace was completed in 1733.}

The palace is not heated in the winter so we layered up again and despite the shivering, quite enjoyed our tour guide and found the whole tour pretty interesting.  It’s no Versailles but it’s pretty close. 

Megan had us cracking up during one portion of the tour.  We went into a large gathering room with a stage and large royal chair in the center.  While everyone was coming in, Megan climbed up on the stage and gestured for everyone to come in, nodding her head at everyone and acting like she was the queen herself.  Everyone was amused.  Even after everyone was in and seated she still stood in front nodding her head and saying, ‘Thanks for coming’.  Oh, she’s a funny thing.

  

Megan with a St. Nickolas decoration outside the palace.  Emily looks like a real Eskimo with TWO fur lined layers.  At least she was warm though.

New Year’s Eve we spent quietly at home after our bowling and out to eat plans were foiled.  Instead we played games and watched movies until midnight.  12:00 came with a bang… or maybe a thousand bangs.  All we could hear were fire works going off in all directions.  We rushed up to the girls room on the top floor and stared out the big bay window.  In three directions we could see fireworks going off one after another.  Totally legal here… fireworks are a big German New Year’s Eve tradition and EVERYBODY was outside lighting theirs off.  We watched for probably twenty minutes in awe.  When we left to go downstairs, drink our sparkling cider and call our families we could still hear them loud and constant for another twenty minutes.  When I went to bed at 12:45am I was finally starting to hear four second pauses between each one.  Germans sure know to bring in the New Year!